HSA July 2023
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P U B L I C A N P R O F I L E<br />
Never Say Die:<br />
The Setbacks<br />
and Success of<br />
a Pub Family<br />
BY DION HAYMAN<br />
Allen, Gina and Daniel in the dining room of the Golden Grove Tavern.<br />
Half a century of hard work, risk<br />
taking and rebounding from<br />
setbacks are the enduring hallmarks<br />
of the Cassin family’s hotel journey.<br />
On <strong>July</strong> 4 this year, Allen and Gina<br />
Cassin celebrated 30 years at The<br />
Grove, along with their son Daniel,<br />
who is the hotel’s general manager.<br />
Thirty years is an incredible<br />
achievement - but it’s nearly 50<br />
years since Gina set her future<br />
family’s course as a teenage girl.<br />
YOUNG LOVE<br />
At age 14 - yes, 14 years old - Gina<br />
started as office girl at the Enfield<br />
Hotel, working for Ron Myers.<br />
He was an innovative and dynamic<br />
kind of leader and Gina picked up a<br />
lot of his traits.<br />
Allen had just been discharged from<br />
the army. He was on a working<br />
holiday when he stopped in Adelaide<br />
and landed a job at the Enfield Hotel<br />
and fell in love with Gina.<br />
The year was 1974. The couple were<br />
married three years later and spent<br />
two years running pubs in<br />
WA before returning to Adelaide.<br />
That’s when Allen made the<br />
fortuitous decision to take a<br />
job at the Belair Hotel.<br />
Here they met their now longstanding<br />
friend – Peter Hurley,<br />
his uncle Jock and their partners<br />
Jenny and Pat.<br />
“Dad said in the early days, Jock<br />
was a bit apprehensive about them<br />
(Allen and Gina), but by the end they<br />
were best friends,” Daniel said.<br />
The Cassins’ relationship with the<br />
Hurleys further evolved when Gina<br />
began working at the Hotel Royal in<br />
Torrensville.<br />
Before long, it had morphed into a<br />
partnership as they joined forces to<br />
take over the lease of the Reservoir<br />
Hotel at Newton.<br />
It was the advent of Sunday trading<br />
in the early 80s and no-one was<br />
quite sure how warmly it would<br />
be received, so they decided not<br />
to risk overstaffing and promptly<br />
assigned Gina to work as the chef<br />
on Sundays.<br />
It wasn’t the greatest of decisions<br />
as hungry patrons waited - and<br />
waited and waited - for their meals.<br />
“Thirty years is<br />
an incredible<br />
achievement -<br />
but it’s nearly 50<br />
years since Gina<br />
set her future<br />
family’s course<br />
as a teenage girl.”<br />
“They realised pretty quickly that<br />
Mum wasn’t going to cut it as a<br />
chef,” Daniel laughed.<br />
“I didn’t make it, put it that way,”<br />
Gina added.<br />
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